Human sacrifice. It’s gotten a bit of a bad rap these days. Sure, in a world with things like modern science and easy access to nutritious food and liquid product, and the Weather Channel, the entire notion of killing another of your own kind in ritualistic tribute can seem a bit silly. But today, I’d like to take a closer look at one such society known to partake in this slightly questionable practice to see if it’s really all that bad. Should we consider bringing this custom back in the modern era? You’ll just have to wait until the end of the video to hear my thoughts on the matter.
Tucked between the vast caverns of Greymoor and the cramped corridors of the Citadel’s Underworks is an area known as the Wisp Thicket. Here, hooded figures known as Burning Bugs use their strange powers to control fiery Wisps. On the far edge of the thicket stands a giant structure of sticks and grass bound together in the shape of a giant burning bug. Its name: the Father of the Flame.
Lifeless bodies can be found surrounding the figure, and at the totem’s core rests a singular corpse, its shell charred black from flame.
So what were these freaks up to? Why did they go to all the trouble to build this giant totem just so that they could light some guy on fire? Had they considered such skilled craftsmanship might be utilized for nobler pursuits? The exact nature of the Burning Bugs’ dark and fiery rites are never explicitly explained. Outside of Hornet’s own comments in the Hunter’s Journal, the only other direct sources that speak about the Burning Bugs are Nuu and the Bone Scroll found at the top of the Wisp Thicket.
Due to the vague nature of this Pharloom faction, we’re gonna have to engage in some spicy speculation in this video. At their core, the Burning Bugs seem concerningly cult-like in their presentation, so if you’re familiar with other famous cults, the Burning Bugs should look somewhat familiar. But it’s in the details where things can get cryptic. So let’s lay out the facts of the case before we start trying to piece it all together.
Let’s start with the Wisp Thicket itself. When it comes to Silksong areas, Wisp Thicket got the short end of the stick. The whole region is just seven rooms. And the area doesn’t even get its own map, instead having to leech off the Greymoor map.
The Thicket itself is shrouded in darkness, and overgrown with plant life. It’s not clear if these are supposed to be a type of grass like bamboo or reed or some other made up plant life in the same vein as the fictional material known as shellwood found in… Shellwood. It’s referred to as bamboo within the game’s code, so I’m just gonna call it that.
Scattered throughout the region are these pouches suspended in air by rope. Breaking them open reveals their contents to be the remains of charred bugs. The Burning Bugs must store these for future use, although it’s not clear exactly what. They also put a bench in a bag, for some reason. Truly, we are dealing with some of the greatest minds in Pharloom.
All throughout the Wisp Thicket are these red ember-like particles. This might be hinting at the significance of the region itself in shaping the nature of the Wisps and the Burning Bugs.
In terms of structures, there isn’t much here outside of a few bamboo platforms and scaffolding. It seems the Burning Bugs choose to live in tents among the overgrowth.
The Wisp Thicket is also dotted with what we can assume are Wispfire Lanterns, which endlessly spawn Wisps, fiery enemies described as “short-lived sprites born of flickering flame.” Wisps will attack Hornet by flying into her and exploding. They’ll also attack characters like Nuu if given the chance. Good. If a wisp can’t find a target to attack, it will dissipate on its own after about eight seconds or so.
Wisps won’t stop and sing for the Needolin like normal enemies, but they still give unique dialogue, saying things like “Burning shape, all together” and “Call us, call us…”.
The ones usually calling these Wisps are the Burning Bugs, who are “fanatically obsessed with flame”. The Hunter’s Journal tells us the Burning Bugs somehow learned to call and guide the scorching Wisps that share their thicket.
The wording here implies that the Wisps might have existed in the thicket before the Burning Bugs even showed up. Maybe the air of the thicket itself has long carried a strange power that these bugs somehow found a way to harness.
Not only can the Burning Bugs call the Wisps, but they also possess a form of teleportation, disappearing in a cloud of fiery smoke to reposition during combat. When killed, their bodies will slowly catch fire, smoldering away to nothing.
The Burning Bugs are haunted by Grand Mother Silk, as we can see threads connected to them when using the Needolin. The Burning Bugs’ Needolin dialogue mentions them calling out to their father, and asking him to sear and scold them.
This dialogue is paralleled in the Bone Scroll found in the Wisp Thicket which reads:
Hail to your heat! O glorious flame. You who builds and breaks us. Sear our shells. Char them black. That we may rise to join you, wreathed in bright and blazing joy.
From this, we can tell that the Burning Bugs specifically wanted to be burned by the “Father”. Their desires here are similar to how we see the Godseekers speak to the Gods they worship. But instead of being kinky for a moth mommy, the Burning Bugs are instead craving their flaming daddy.
The last piece at play in the Wisp Thicket is the Father of the Flame, a giant totem built and worshipped by the Burning Bugs. The structure itself is situated inside a giant bell which seems to line up with the top of Bellhart. If Hornet approaches the bell from the left side via a room in the Underworks before she reaches the Wisp Thicket, she can actually hear the Burning Bugs from the other side.
The audio file for this is called “BB_chant_under_bell”. It must have been one hell of a chant, because those bugs appear to be dead by the time Hornet reaches the Wisp Thicket. Her arrival awakens the Father of the Flame who flings some Wisps at her while she demonstrates her majestic pogo skills and definitely doesn’t keep missing the lanterns surrounding the arena and having to reclimb back up to reach them again.
Once the Father of the Flame is defeated, it explodes in spectacular fashion, the Burning Bug corpses dissipate, and we get a better look at the bug sitting at its core. The Hunter’s Journal for the boss reads:
The remains of an aged bug were housed at the pyre’s heart. The structure suggested they wished for immolation. If so, I have seen their wish granted.
The geriatric crisp of that bug can be looted, giving Hornet the Wispfire Lantern, a tool that will continuously spawn Wisps that attack her foes at the cost of one thread of silk.
Defeating the Father of the Flame also causes the behavior of the Burning Bugs to change. They become frozen in place, eyes closed and bodies slouched, only acting once Hornet approaches. The Burning Bugs will point at Hornet and then cackle as they burst into flames, turning themselves into Wisps. Any Burning Bug that does this will no longer respawn for the rest of the game. That means you can clear the enemies out of the Wisp Thicket, save for a few lanterns that will still spawn Wisps.
There seems to be another aspect at play here I haven’t mentioned yet: Soul. The Wispfire Lantern charging one thread of Silk per use could imply that the Burning Bugs are channeling Soul to summon Wisps as well.
And there’s another connection we can make with Soul here. The Wisps are described as being born of “Flickering Flame”.
As another member of the Hollow Knight community, Mebi, points out in his excellent write up on the Wispfire Lantern, link in the description, Flickering Flame is also the name of a recipe found in the Ruined Chapel, home to the Snail Shamans.
There’s a lore tablet hidden near the Shaman Crest, which reads:
Five masks swirled soul, brought and broiled.
Four stones rage-baked, crushed powder coarse.
Three shells fresh from pilgrims fallen, to contain and age.
While I don’t think this recipe is going to impress any of Pharloom’s culinary elite, we can clearly see how this connects flickering flame to Soul.
It seems the three primary ingredients are masks, stones and shells. The masks specifically need to be broiled, or exposed to heat. The other tablet in the Ruined Chapel also contains a recipe, but this one calls for masks that are hard. So the goal of broiling these masks might be to soften them. The swirling soul in that other recipe also mentions that it must be enraged, which implies Soul can have different emotions connected to it. And that may change what kind of spell is created from that Soul.
Of course, the Knight uses Soul to heal itself, which is visualized by the creation of masks. But this might be more of a gameplay abstraction. At the very least, this is another connection between masks and Soul.
To briefly mention the other examples; In the Quirrel comic, we see his mask seems to have Soul infused in it. The Ancient Masks Hornet and, presumably, the Knight collect are made from Pale Ore. And the Bone Masks the Mask Maker makes are coated with a lacquer described as a pale glaze. Because Groal the Great describes Soul as a swirling, pale flame, any time something is described as pale, there’s reason to believe it is somehow related to Soul. We can also see that the trap the Shamans set for Grand Mother Silk uses masks, possibly as a way to channel or supply the Soul used to perform the spell.
Getting back to the recipe, Rage-baked stones might just be the same volatile material used to create Pimpillos. Or perhaps rage-infused Soul can be used to “cook” objects somehow, which imparts them with certain properties. Then these stones are crushed into coarse powder.
And then, as the cherry on top, it seems the Shamans would store all this inside the shells of bugs to allow the mixture to age. We never see any Wispfire Lanterns held inside dead bug shells, but we do know the Burning Bugs keep plenty of charred bug shells around. It’s not really clear how these spells form from their ingredients, but maybe once they did, they were moved from the dead bugs over to the Wispfire Lanterns found throughout the region.
So it appears the Flickering Flame is something Snail Shamans learned how to create as well. Whether or not these two factions learned this skill independently or from one another has no clear answer. Outside of this one detail, nothing really connects these factions at all.
But if the Burning Bugs are using a spell to summon Wisps, how did they even find out about all this in the first place? How did the Burning Bugs become obsessed with flame? Surely, there must have been something that drew them into these strange rituals initially.
Since the game itself is being coy with the details here, let’s take a look at the real world inspirations Team Cherry might have used when designing this freaky bug cult.
The Father of the Flame is a clear reference to the Wicker Man, a structure supposedly used by ancient Celtics in ritualistic human sacrifice. Basically they would put humans and animals in a giant man-shaped structure and then light the thing on fire. But it’s not clear if these wicker men, as described in the historical record, were ever real. Something like this probably wouldn’t stay standing very long once set on fire, so it wouldn’t be a great way to sacrifice things.
Claims of human sacrifice among the Celtics come from Greek and Roman sources from around the 1st century B.C.E. Back in the day, the Celtics occupied a fair bit of Western Europe, including parts of modern day countries like Luxemburg, Switzerland, and France. This put them in conflict with the nearby Greeks and Romans.
Our only first hand account of the use of the Wicker Man comes from Julius Caesar in his book Commentaries on the Gallic War.
In book 6 chapter 16 he writes:
…figures of immense size with limbs woven out of twigs, filled with living men and set on fire so that the victims perished in a sheet of flame.
But we can’t completely trust Caesar’s words here. His primary goal in writing Commentaries on the Gallic War was as propaganda to justify his campaign in Gaul to the public of Rome. So there would have been an incentive to paint the Celtics in a negative light.
And that goes for the other Greek and Roman sources on the Celts too. While there is evidence to suggest some rare instances of human sacrifice among the ancient Celtics, specific claims about a supposed Wicker Man should be taken with skepticism.
It can be tough to know if the news you’re getting is unbiased or not. That’s why I don’t read the news.
Eventually, the region of Gaul and the Celtic people came under the rule of Rome and their culture assimilated into the larger Roman culture, leaving many of their former practices behind. However, certain aspects of this ancient culture, particularly their language, Gallic, has survived in modern day in parts of France and Britain.
If we extrapolate this idea to Silksong, then it could imply that the Burning Bugs are the lingering remains of an older, ancient tradition that was ended by the Citadel. Greymoor, located just below the Wisp Thicket, might have once more widely worshiped the flame, before being forced to collect Silkdregs.
We have a few pieces of evidence connecting the Burning Bugs to Greymoor, although it’s a bit tenuous. First of all, they are called FARMER_WISP in the game’s code. This is a naming convention shared by the Greymoor bugs. Dreg Catchers are FARMER_CATCHER, Silk Snippers are called FARMER_SCISSORS, and Thread Rakers are called FARMER_CENTIPEDE.
A Burning Bug also appears in Greymoor in the Silksong reveal trailer, which might imply the two groups were once one. But this trailer was from 2019, so it’s hard to draw anything conclusive from it. Another connection we can draw is that the bamboo that grows in the Wisp Thicket seems to be the material used in several structures found in Greymoor as well as Sinner’s Road. So it’s likely that the bugs of Greymoor have been to the Wisp Thicket at some point in the past, or maybe the Wisp Thicket used to extend further down into Greymoor.
Going back to the Wicker Man, we’re told from our sources that these rituals of human sacrifice were done in part for better crop harvests. This would further connect the Burning Bugs to the bugs of Greymoor thematically.
But the Burning Bugs don’t seem interested in crop harvests at all. Instead, they want to be burned by the flame and become one with it. So I think this connection of farmers and the Wicker Man might be where Team Cherry started with the idea, but the game took the reason for their worship in a different direction.
I’m not entirely convinced that the bugs of Greymoor were once all devout followers of the Father. But I still think they’re related. And l also think there have been Burning Bugs worshipping the Flame since before the Citadel took root at the top of Pharloom.
My reason for thinking this is due to how differently the Burning Bugs act from other factions in Pharloom, particularly the Stilkin of Bilewater. When they got their hands on the esoteric magic of a Snail Shaman, they used it to plan their revenge on the Citadel, writing in a lore tablet:
Fill your hearts with hate, for power has now been claimed, and with it we shall punish.
But the Burning Bugs show no interest in fighting back against the Citadel. If the existence of the Citadel didn’t act as a motivation for these bugs, that lends to the idea that this practice of worshiping flame existed before Grand Mother Silk attempted to lay claim to the land.
But it also raises an interesting question. If the Burning Bugs’ worship predates the Citadel, and their end goal is to become one with the flame, why is it that this is only happening once Hornet arrives in Pharloom? How did this civilization even last so long when the whole point is for everyone to kill themselves via immolation? Ask any business major in the comments section about the importance of market presence and customer bases and you’ll understand what I mean. Just what are these guys thinking?
That’s where I want to talk about the other inspiration Team Cherry drew from for this faction: the Will-o’-the-wisp. We can see from Ari’s sketchbook that Will-o’-the-wisps were a direct inspiration for this enemy’s design.
While the concept of a flickering flame isn’t unique to just one region of the world, the Will-o’-the-wisp specifically seems to have originated in the United Kingdom. One folktale, found in Katharine Mary Briggs’ A Dictionary of Fairies: Banshees, Boggarts and Other Folklore Creatures, gives an origin for this phenomenon.
According to the story, a blacksmith named Will the Smith was so wicked on Earth they wouldn’t let him into either Heaven or Hell. The Devil gave him a piece of coal to stay warm with, and for whatever reason, Will decided to use that coal to lure wanderers to their deaths in the boggy lands he haunted. Will the Smith would have loved the Internet.
Another example is Pwcea, the Welsh equivalent of the fairy Puck found in Shakespear’s work, who would lead travelers up to a ravine, before jumping over the ravine and blowing out his candle, leaving the wanderer stranded.
My point is Will-o’-the-Wisps are commonly associated with this idea of tricking or luring people in the night.
If we go off that idea, then maybe the Burning Bugs are nothing more than victims being lured into this strange cult by an otherworldly force. That would make them quite a bit different from the Godseekers who seemed a lot more self-motivated in their ambitions. They built their own tuning devices and traveled a vast distance to worship the gods of Hallownest, all in an attempt to escape their own silent mind. The Burning Bugs, on the other hand, might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This might not even be the first time this has happened. It’s possible that the Burning Bugs Hornet encounters aren’t even the first generations of bugs to give themselves up to the flame. This might be a cyclical process, with the Father of the Flame constantly recruiting new bugs only to have them sacrifice themselves through this strange ritual, becoming one with the Father. This would mirror the cyclical process we see with the Grimm Troupe, with the Nightmare King needing to be fed to the child so that the Troupe can continue on.
So the cycle goes like this. The Father of the Flame, which is either a Higher Being or some other unseen force, has some influence within the Wisp Thicket. Bugs that wander into the area get drawn in by the flame, and become obsessed. They then learn to create their own Wisps using the Flickering Flame spell. With this power, they can kill more bugs and create even more spells using their remains.
Eventually the bugs construct a pyre in the shape of their God, and perform a ritual to imbue the figure with their own Soul. This might be in an attempt to commune with the Father in the physical world. The Wicker Bug is shaped like a massive Burning Bug, the form the father might take in the minds of his followers. Once this is done, the remaining Bugs can leave their earthly form behind and become Wisps as well. The Thicket then becomes dormant, waiting for new Greymoor bugs to get drawn in and begin the process again.
It’s not clear if Hornet defeating the Father of the Flame boss fight would have broken this cycle. The Burning Bugs certainly recognize Hornet’s actions, but the fact that they laugh sinisterly before exploding into Wisps to attack her implies to me that the story isn’t over yet. Simply put, the vibes are off.
I get the feeling that the Father of the Flame is still out there somewhere, waiting for the chance to catch more victims up in his flame.
Of course, this is all speculation. I don’t think the game gives us quite enough evidence to determine that this process is 100% cyclical. But I don’t think that it’s much of a stretch given how higher beings tend to act in these games. If their followers kill themselves as part of their worship, it would only make sense to keep those numbers up using a bit of recruitment. And it seems like these Wisps are the vehicle for that, drawing bugs in with obsession, begging to be called forth so that they can set the shells of bugs ablaze.
I’ve been thinking lately about what our modern day equivalent would be to these evil, seductive Wisps. Gambling. AI girlfriends. TikTok. We may laugh at the foolish Burning Bugs of the Wisp Thicket. But perhaps we aren’t so different from them ourselves.
Except for the whole spontaneous combustion thing. I don’t think we really need to worry about that part.
Songs used(song names are internal Silksong file names unless stated otherwise):
H144-71 WIP Trobbio
H211 Bit Dreamy
H49-102 MAIN LAVA
H159_MistMazeAmbient
Creepy Main
(Hollow Knight) S19 Shaman
(Hollow Knight) S48-66 Dung Defender
H108-71 Greymoor v4 MAIN
Sad Wanderer - MAIN
H117 Wilds-30 MAIN
H116 Coral Steps-42 MAIN ALT
Title
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